Callout: Simpson observes that Indonesians "still wrestle with the
bitter legacy of the choices forged in Jakarta and Washington during these
fateful years."

********************

Dr. Bradley R. Simpson's Economists with Guns: Authoritarian
Development and U.S.-Indonesian Relations, 1960-1968 should be important
reading for those with foreign policy responsibilities in the new Obama
administration. This exhaustively researched and richly documented history
of American engagement with Indonesia during a critical period is a
cautionary tale about means and ends -- and unintended consequences.

Simpson, an assistant professor of history and international studies at
Princeton University, draws on a hoard of recently declassified U.S.
government documents to reconstruct a detailed history that closely
examines Washington's policy from the perspective of political, security
and economic objectives during the turbulent years before and after the
violent overthrow of President Sukarno by General Suharto.

He makes especially effective use of Embassy Jakarta's reporting and
analysis during the period to illuminate policymakers' intentions and
prejudices, placing them in the context of the diplomatic and budgetary
challenges posed by the Vietnam War. As Simpson explains, the growing
costs of that conflict shaped attitudes and options for both the Kennedy
and Johnson administrations. At the same time, American commitment to the
economic "modernization" of Indonesia ultimately found
expression in a decision to support a corrupt and brutal military.

The author sets the stage for his account with a well-researched review
of Washington's efforts to dismember Indonesia in the late 1950s, an
extraordinarily ill-conceived and poorly executed misadventure which few
Americans remember -- but few Indonesians have forgotten. He then
reconstructs the policy considerations that led the Kennedy administration
to support Sukarno's demand that the Dutch turn over the western part of
the island of New Guinea to Indonesian control.

This Cold War-driven calculation not only rebuffed a NATO ally but
betrayed the democratic aspirations of the local Papuan people, whose
aspiration for self-rule was ignored and ultimately betrayed by means of a
United Nations-approved, Indonesian-organized referendum that was
immediately recognized as blatantly fraudulent. Washington would repeat
this pattern by failing to support a British initiative to defeat
Sukarno's "Konfrontasi," a military policy aimed at blocking
establishment of Malaysia.

Simpson gives us a carefully documented but horrifyingly vivid account
of the massive 1965-1966 massacre of Indonesians alleged to be members or
supporters of the Communist Party. The U.S. role in this slaughter of
hundreds of thousands, and the detention of as many or more people for
years under life-threatening conditions, underscores its willingness
throughout the Cold War to abandon principle and ignore international law
in the service of geostrategic objectives. The Central Intelligence
Agency's provision of small arms to the local military with the purpose of
arming Muslim and nationalist youth engaged in killing of alleged
communists constitutes but one example of direct complicity in what ranks
as one of the greatest slaughters of the 20th century.

Simpson makes a compelling case that Washington's empowerment of the
Indonesian military to assume control of economic and political
institutions led directly to its "dual function," a concept
entailing a direct role in governance that the military remains reluctant
to discard a decade after the 1998 collapse of Suharto's "new
order" revealed the "myth of developmental success and poverty
reduction." As the author notes, Indonesians "still wrestle with
the bitter legacy of the choices forged in Jakarta and Washington during
these fateful years."

A concluding chapter tracing that legacy is particularly valuable for
policy practitioners today as they review the Bush administration's
embrace of foreign militaries as partners in "the war on terror"
-- even when their subordination to civilian control, accountability
before the law and respect for human rights are all dubious at best.

--

Edmund McWilliams, a Foreign Service officer from 1975 to 2001, was
political counselor in Jakarta from 1996 to 1999, receiving AFSA's
Christian Herter Award for constructive dissent by a senior FSO in 1998.
Since retiring as a senior FSO, he has worked with various U.S. and
foreign human rights NGOs as a volunteer.